LONDON: Hackers have gained access to private messages of nearly 120 million Facebook accounts and already published such messages from 81,000 accounts for generating money, the BBC reported.

Several users whose details have been compromised were based in Ukraine and Russia but some were also from the UK, US, Brazil and elsewhere, the report said on Friday.

"The hackers offered to sell access for 10 cents per account. However, their advert has since been taken offline," it added.

The breach was first discovered in September and the messages were reportedly obtained through unnamed rogue browser extensions.

Facebook, however, said its systems were not breached as part of the hack.

"We have contacted browser-makers to ensure that known malicious extensions are no longer available to download in their stores," Guy Rose, Vice President of Product Management at Facebook, was quoted as saying.

"We have also contacted law enforcement and have worked with local authorities to remove the website that displayed information from Facebook accounts."

The BBC Russian Service contacted five Russian Facebook users whose private messages had been uploaded and confirmed the posts were theirs.

"One example included photographs of a recent holiday, another was a chat about a recent Depeche Mode (British rock band) concert and a third included complaints about a son-in-law," the report said.

In the biggest-ever security breach after Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook in October admitted that hackers broke into nearly 50 million users' accounts by stealing their "access tokens" or digital keys.

Facebook Data Breach Making Headlines, Here's How Other Scandals Began

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The Big Breach

10 Apr, 2018

The Facebook leak was traced back to Aleksandr Kogan, an academic at Cambridge university. Here is the root of other such worldwide breaches.
(Image: Twitter/@AleksandrBKogan)

Card Sharks

10 Apr, 2018

In 2012, companies like Visa Inc licensee, J C Penney Co, JetBlue Airways Corp and French retailer Carrefour SA were attacked by hackers, resulting in a collective loss of up to $300 million. A Russian and Ukrainian gang hacked into the records for over seven years, breaching 8,00,000 bank accounts and stealing more than 160 million credit and debit card numbers. While his colleagues did the hacking, 32-year-old Russian Roman Kotov was charged with mining the data.

Bay Thieves

10 Apr, 2018

While eBay’s database was hacked earlier in 2014, the news came out only in May that year. The online auction house went into damage control. Its then CEO John Donahue asked 145 million users to change their passwords, but said that financial information was stored separately and hence, remained safe. One mind boggling detail is that the unknown hackers had access to eBay’s accounts for 229 days.

Soupnazi

10 Apr, 2018

In 2007, more than 94 million customer accounts belonging to the department store group TJX were compromised. The man behind it, Albert Gonzalez, was also indicted in the Heartland Payment’s data breach, where hackers stole more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers from the payment processing system in 2008. College dropout Gonzalez used several screen names like ‘soupnazi’ (a reference to the popular Seinfeld episode), ‘kingchilli’ and ‘cumbajohny’ in the TJX hack. While Gonzalez was arrested in a Miami hotel, officials found $1.6 million in cash hidden in plastic bags in a drum buried at his parent’s backyard. The soupnazi was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2010.

Stop Phishing

10 Apr, 2018

The personal records of over 78 million customers were stolen in 2015 from American health insurance giant Anthem. Investigators suspected China’s role in the breach. Apparently, the hack happened in 2014, when just one user at an Anthem subsidiary opened a phishing email. It gave access to the company’s warehouse. In 2017, Anthem reached a settlement of $115 million — the money will reportedly be used to pay for an additional two years of credit monitoring for the breach’s victims.

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Rosen had said that Facebook fixed the vulnerability and reset the access tokens for a total of 90 million accounts -- 50 million that had access tokens stolen and 40 million that were subject to a "View As" look-up in 2017.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC), which is Facebook's lead privacy regulator in Europe, has opened a formal investigation into this data breach that could result in a fine of $1.63 billion.

According to Digital Trends, the latest hack involves the use of browser extensions.

"It is always best to check which source an extension is coming from, and which permissions it is being granted access to," it said.

Test Of Discrimination

31 Jul, 2018

Serena Williams recently complained on social media about the frequency with which she is selected for anti-doping tests. She tweeted: “…and it’s that time of the day to get ‘randomly’ drug tested and only test Serena. Out of all the players it’s been proven I’m the one getting tested the most. Discrimination? I think so. At least I’ll be keeping the sport clean #StayPositive.”Here is where the world stood last week on its prejudices about people of different race, age, gender, belief or medical condition.(Image: AFP)

Still A Long Way To Go

31 Jul, 2018

Based on a 13-country survey, a new study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) reveals that despite years of work, stigma and discrimination still persist against people living with HIV. Interviews for the survey were carried out with more than 1,00,000 people living with HIV.

Picking Up A Flight

31 Jul, 2018

Football club Barcelona raised a sexism storm as it made its women team fly in economy while men travelled first class on the same flight. “We regret that there has been a controversy because of a simple issue: When the club hired the charter flight, it was not expected that the women’s team would travel...” a club spokesperson clarified.

Harassment At Workplace

31 Jul, 2018

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed a lawsuit against billionaire Michael Rubin-led Fanatics Retail Group, a global merchandise company, for racial discrimination and harassment against an employee. In its suit, the EEOC has charged that a supervisor at Arizona Discount Movers frequently made racial comments and used the N-word to refer to an employee.

End Of Addiscrimination

31 Jul, 2018

Facebook has signed an agreement with Washington State, US to modify its advertisement platform after an investigation found that the platform could be used to abet discrimination. The social media giant will end the practice of allowing advertisers to exclude certain groups based on race, religious belief and sex orientation from viewing advertisements.
(Image: Reuters)

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